South Africa: For Refugees in South Africa, Documents Do Not Always Mean Safety

For more than two decades, Brian Muziringa, 53, has built a life in South Africa through systems that have often treated his presence as temporary, doubtful or disposable.

He has slept on Johannesburg's streets, queued outside Refugee Reception Offices, waited months for documents, lost opportunities because of paperwork that did not arrive, and now watches as anti-migrant groups try to turn public frustration into a deadline for foreigners to leave.

As the global community observes World Refugee Day on 20 June, under the theme "Until everyone is safe", for Muziringa the escalation of anti-migrant sentiment has made the gap between legal protection and safety impossible to ignore. Although the rhetoric is often framed around "illegal foreigners", he said the distinction disappears on the ground.

"There is a sentiment where they say 'illegal migrants', but the narrative tone is saying every foreigner"

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"This is not about documentation. This is about hatred, discrimination," he said, sitting on his bed in a small backroom in White City, Soweto. He is a physically challenged refugee from Zimbabwe.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees's (UNHCR) latest figures, South Africa hosts more than 167 000 refugees and asylum seekers. Xenophobic vigilante groups such as March and March often spread widely exaggerated and false figures about the number of immigrants living in South Africa, but according to Stats SAs figures, based on the 2022 Census, there are about 2.4 million people born outside South Africa, making up roughly 3.9% of the population.

Muziringa fled Zimbabwe after political activism, state repression and a worsening health system made it increasingly difficult for him to remain safely in the country. But his experience in South Africa has shown him that refugee status, on its own, does not protect people from exclusion, bureaucracy or public hostility.

He says the refugee system itself has often pushed people into vulnerability. In the early years of trying to regularise his stay, he remembers hundreds of Zimbabweans queuing outside Refugee Reception Offices, while only a handful of people were helped.

"What I would say is that it is technical, institutionalised discrimination," he said. "The system itself provides the block. They block your access to services. It is something which has been happening since I have been here. It was only not spoken about as much as now, with March and March and others trying to block people, but the system itself technically pushes you out."

Those delays have shaped his life in material ways, having lost an opportunity to study in Canada after his refugee passport was delayed, despite already being issued. More recently, he said he had spent nine months without valid papers while waiting for processes linked to the Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs.

"I was undocumented for nine months. I became undocumented in the streets, but I was documented in the system. It is very ridiculous," he said.

His first years in Johannesburg were also marked by homelessness. After arriving in the city, he could not access money sent by relatives because he did not have the South African identity documents required by the system. He spent four months sleeping on the streets, while also trying to protect his prosthetics from cold, heat, infection and damage.

"It was difficult living in the streets, very difficult," he said.

A chance referral later took him to the Central Methodist Church, then associated with Bishop Paul Verryn. The church in the Johannesburg CBD became a safe haven for refugees, asylum-seekers, and migrants.

Muziringa said the same spaces of refuge are again under pressure, as anti-migrant groups and state actors can turn places of care into further sites of fear. Muziringa said there is a palpable sense of worry in his community, itself an area in Soweto that has seen xenophobic violence and looting in the past.

"People in the community are worried. They are saying, don't be afraid, but don't relax," he said. "There is always a 'but'."

Prof Loren Landau, the co-director of the Wits-Oxford Mobility Governance Lab (MGL), said despite refugees and asylum-seekers accessing documents, people still struggle to register their children for schools and access healthcare. "They share many of these frustrations with South Africans who find their legal rights do not translate easily to actual benefits. Add to this ignorance of the law and bias, and life is all that much harder," he said.

With the June 30 deadline - set by March and March - looming, Landau said the government and law enforcement had a duty to protect refugees and asylum-seekers. "[But] the country is in a difficult situation. It does not, after all, protect the rights, safety, and dignity of so many of its own citizens. That said, it must take seriously the threats to immigrants and what anti-immigrant violence will do to township economies and the country's global reputation.

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"This need not require a significant and public crackdown, but rather using intelligence to hold march leaders accountable, to slowly drain them of resources and publicity, and to help lower tensions," he said.

There have been growing calls from some of the anti-migrant and xenophobic groups to place refugees and asylum-seekers into camps, but Mike Ndlovu from Kopanang Afrika Against Xenophobia (KAAX), said that would strip away the human rights and dignity of people.

"The South African Constitution guarantees everyone within our borders freedom of movement, the right to choose their residence, and the right to work. Camps trap people in indefinite limbo, dependency on government, and hopelessness, turning survivors of trauma into prisoners. It also fuels xenophobia rather than preventing it." he said.

Ndlovu further emphasised that the looming June 30 deadline was not a government-mandate deadline, but rather an unofficial one by "vigilante groups who have been terrorising foreign nationals".